a human being in support of the law of supply and demand. No, she
concluded gloomily, Neil might have given Lisa a carnation and a copy of
the Bhagavad-Gita, but he wouldn't have shot her.
"What do you want to bet he reads Thoreau?" she asked Mutt.
Mutt yawned.
Neil Miles's homestead was perched on top of a rising swell of land in
the middle of a long, wide valley swept smooth by glacial recession. The
soil was dark and rich, and if the summers were short this far north,
the summer days were eighteen hours long and, this far inland, hot. The
moisture-laden winds off the Gulf of Alaska wrung themselves out against
the southern slopes of the Quilaks, and the resulting summer rains were
nourishing without being torrential. You could grow anything in the space
of a Green Valley's short, hot summer, and the home steaders did, and
more than one grew it for resale. On that cheery thought Kate pressed
the Jag's starter and half-rode, half-pushed her way out of Neil's front
yard. After her fourth stop and another interview identical to the
previous three, Kate made straight for the Step. The higher they
climbed, the colder it became and the smoother the track, and the last
few miles went fast, switchbacks and all. They emerged onto a plateau, a
flat, treeless step of land three thousand feet up from the valley and
anywhere from six to sixteen thousand feet below the jagged peaks at its
back. The Step was a mile in length and three thousand feet across and
had an airstrip running down its exact center. An old Cessna Kate
recognized as the one George Perry had been working on two days before
was lifting off one
end of the strip as she emerged onto the plateau. She waved, and the
plane rocked a hello before dropping its right wing in an abrupt bank
toward the mountains.
South of the Step lay the Kanuyaq River and civilization, or what passed
for it in the Park. North of the Step lay the Quilak Mountain Range. At
one end of the airstrip, Park headquarters was a clump of prefabricated
buildings that housed representatives of every government bureaucracy
that had anything to do with federal land management and natural
resources, as well as a few that had nothing to do with either.
Coexisting in frequently unfriendly. proximity were the U.S. Department
of Wildlife, the Alaska State Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska
State Division of Mines, the Alaska State Division of Forestry, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Land
Management, and last, but as Dan O'Brian would certainly tell you most
emphatically, not least, the National Park Service.
Presiding over this cacophonous, controlled brawl was Dan O'Brian. As
head ranger he was in nominal charge of keeping the sports fishermen
from assaulting the subsistence fishermen, both groups from attacking
the commercial fishermen, and all three of them from rising up in
concert to do away with the grossly outnumbered but resolute agents of
the Department of Fish and Game. It was enough to induce paranoia in the
most well-balanced and even-tempered individual, which was probably why
when Kate tracked Dan down, she found him howling obscenities behind the
closed door of his otherwise empty office.
"Taken up primal scream therapy, Danny boy?"
Dan O'Brian never did anything halfway. When he hated, he hated, and
when he loved, he loved, and he adored Kate. His voice broke in
mid-howl. Jumping to his feet, he came around the desk and swept her up
into a rough embrace and a smacking kiss.
"Watch yourself, bozo," she said, fending him off, "or I'll sic Mutt on
you."
He leaned over, grabbed Mutt's head between two rough-skinned hands and
gave her a smacking kiss, too. Mutt's eyes closed halfway and she almost
purred. "That dog's heels are even rounder than yours," Dan observed.
"What're you two doing up here this early?" His gaze sharpened. "You
another month."
Kate raised an eyebrow. "You expecting a lot of fires this season? It's
only April, Dan."
"It's been a bad. winter, and I hear salmon prices are going to drop
even further this year than last." He made a face and spread his hands.
"You know how it is. Times are tough. When times get tough people get
broke. Before long somebody heads out into the Park and finds themselves
a stand of spruce infested with spruce beetles and strikes a match, and
shortly thereafter goes to work smoke jumping for the Department of Interi
or." He gave a fatalistic shrug. "It feeds the kids."
Kate eyed him with something approaching respect.
"You're sitting pretty calm at the prospect of
of Park acres going up in flames."
"Not calm. Reconciled to my fate, maybe. Anyway,
you want a job?"
Kate felt the weight of the envelope lying against her
breast and smiled to herself. "Not this year."
"Damn. We could use someone on the line that knows
smoke trail from morning fog." He sighed. "No, I'm up here for something
else entirely."
Something in her voice alerted him. He returned to
his seat, folded his hands on his desk and regarded her,
at attention. "What's going on?"
"You heard about McAniff's little shooting spree
down in Niniltna, I assume."
His face darkened. "Who hasn't?" He shook his head.
"Bunch of good people dead, for no earthly reason that
anyone can discover. Crazy bastard." He eyed her curiously. "Chopper Jim
said McAniff made a try at you and you nailed him."
"Sort of." "Good girl."
"Thanks. Mutt deserves most of the credit."
"Good girl," Dan told Mutt, unknowingly echoing Kate's very words that
day. Mutt's tail thumped the floor enthusiastically. "What's the going
rate for apprehending homicidal maniacs these days?"
"The grateful thanks of John Q. Public."
"Lucky you. So what's the problem? You caught McAniff, murder weapon in
hand. From what I hear, he hasn't denied doing any of it."
"On the contrary."
"Bragging about it, is he?" Dan said distastefully. "Nonstop, from what
I hear."
"Sick." "Yeah." "So what is the problem?" He gave her a shrewd look.
"There is one, isn't there?"
"The problem is, one of the victims was killed by a bullet from a
different rifle."
Sound seemed to seep out of the room, leaving an empty, hollow feeling
behind.
"Jesus H. Christ on a crutch," Dan said at last, slowly, the syllables
dropping into the silence like rocks down a deep well. "We got another
mad killer on the loose with a 30.06?"
"So it seems."
He seemed to see the bandage on her temple for the first time, and his
eyes narrowed. He raised an eyebrow, and she nodded. "I think so." She
raised a hand to forestall his next question. "No, I didn't see them."
"Where were you?"
"Lisa Getty was the one shot with a different rifle. I was tossing her
boat down on the river. They got me on deck."
&n
bsp; He sat upright. "Lisa Getty?" She nodded, and he said with utter
loathing, "Whoever killed that bitch did everything in the Park on four
legs a favor."
Kate sighed. "Great. Another prospective charter member for the Grateful
Lisa Getty's Dead Fan Club. What, specifically, did you have against her?"
"Nothing I could prove or I'd of jailed that bitch long since." Dan was
a tall man with bushy, carrot-colored hair, blue eyes that usually
twinkled with good humor and an open, freckled face that was usually
smiling. There was no smile and no twinkle now. "I followed her up into
the Quilaks twice and found at least half a dozen dead black bear both
goddam times."
"Ah. Bladders gone?"
"Yep, and the fur and the meat just left there, wasted." "Not wasted,
exactly," Kate murmured, "coyotes and foxes got to eat, too."
Dan carried on, unheeding. "God, how I hate that! I could live with the
poaching, game has to be regularly harvested to keep the population down
so it doesn't run out of feed, but it's the waste that pisses me off.
And this time of year is the worst. Jesus, the goddam bears've been
sleeping all winter, their coats are the best they'll ever be, they've
just woke up and they haven't had a chance to get at the fish yet so
their meat tastes the best it ever will, and that bitch shoots'em and
guts'em for the fucking bladders and leaves the rest there to rot! Can
you believe it?"
The question was obviously rhetorical. Kate, having been acquainted with
the residents of the Park for a lot longer than Dan, who as a ten-year
veteran was a comparative newcomer, wisely refrained from answering.
"And I know," he added, "I know she had a hand in that sudden drop in
sea otter population we had in the Ikamag Fjords last year. Plus I'm
positive she's been flying into the Ahlbach seal rookery. Bitch was
a goddam one-woman meat grinder."
"I hear black bear bladders are fetching a good price." His spleen
temporarily vented, Dan gave a gloomy nod. "Anywhere from six hundred to
a thousand bucks apiece on the Asian black market. And why not? Any Hong
Kong chemist'll tell you, ground bladder of black bear'll cure anything
from impotence to influenza."
Kate raised her eyebrows. "Nice work if you can get it."
"Like hell." Dan glared at her suspiciously. "And don't let it give you
any ideas, either, Kate. We got a stable population of bear in this
friggin' Park and I'd like to keep it that way."
Kate widened her eyes at Dan, the picture of innocence. He snorted, and
she smothered a smile. "You sure Lisa was the one doing the poaching?"
"I'm sure. Like I said, I had my suspicions and I followed her a couple
times. She left bear carcasses on her trail the way moose leave nuggets.
I was dying to bust her; I just hadn't been able to catch her in the act."
"Odd," Kate said in a ruminative voice. "What is?"
"Oh, I heard one of your rangers was spending some time with her." She
met his eyes. "That his idea, or yours?"
Beneath her fascinated gaze Dan swelled up to twice his normal size and
exploded in a burst of rage. "One of my rangers was fucking that bitch?
Which one? Tell me! I'll kill him! Which one? Goddammit, Kate, if you
know, you'd better say!"
Just for meanness Kate said, "It was Max Chaney," and Dan erupted out of
his chair and stamped over to the door and shouted Chaney's name down
the hall. When there was no reply, the door slammed shut with a force
that reverberated up through the legs of Kate's chair. Mutt came to her
feet, alarmed.
Simmering, Dan sat down again, very erect. A long, timid silence ensued,
broken by the cautious creak of the opening door. An eye peered through
the crack. "You bellowed, boss?"
"Where's that fucker Chaney?"
"Not on the premises, boss," the voice said, gaining confidence now that
its owner knew he wasn't the one
on the carpet.
"Well find him or find out where the hell he is!"
The door shut promptly, and feet beat rapidly down the hall and out of
earshot.
"I remember once," Kate said, "when I was working for the D.A.'s office,
they made me take this class called Interaction Management. It was all
about how to supervise one's employees, to teach them how to get along
with their fellow workers and encourage them to realize their full
potential." She looked at Dan. "Wonder why they didn't call you in as a
guest lecturer."
The door crashed back against the wall, and a tall young man, thin
almost to the point of emaciation stood breathing heavily in the
doorway, his exhalations causing his magnificent handlebar mustache to
ruffle like seaweed in a strong current. "You better come, boss."
Dan was on his feet, his eyes fixed on the other man. "What's the
matter, Kevin?"
Kevin's face was paper white, and he was shaking so hard Kate thought
she could hear his bones rattling together beneath their negligible
layer of skin. "It's Chaney, boss. I think he's dead."
Max Chaney was dead all right, as dead as a bullet through the forehead
can make one. It was a small, dark, perfectly round hole, with very
little blood. He lay on his back in front of an open window in his tiny
bedroom, as if the shot had caught him as he leaned out to take a breath
of spring air. If so, it had been his last.
"Stop," Kate said sharply from the doorway. "Don't touch anything else.
Everybody out. You, too, Dan. Kevin? Get on the radio and put in a call
to Chopper Jim. Tell him there's a man down, dead, same M.O. as Lisa
Getty, looks like the same weapon. Tell him to get on the horn to
Anchorage and get a forensics team up here crash. Got that?" Kate had to
repeat herself. "Have you got that, Kevin?"
"Man dead, same M.O. as Lisa Getty, forensics team crash," Kevin
repeated numbly.
"After you talk to Jim, try to raise Bobby Clark on the radio. He might
not be there but Jack Morgan probably will be." Kevin hung fire where he
was, staring at Chaney's body with dilated eyes and a slowly greening
complexion. Kate put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a little nudge.
He seemed to come awake, and turned to stumble through the crowd
gathered around the door.
Nothing in life makes a body look as awkward as death, not even sex.
Chaney's limbs looked broken where they lay, as if death had somehow
rearranged them to grow out at odd angles. His brown hair was neatly
parted and combed, his skin was whiter than Kevin's, and his eyes, wide,
thickly lashed and brown in color, stared at the ceiling with a puzzled
look. Waving back Dan, whose shock had given way to a cold, tight-lipped
fury, Kate knelt next to the remains of Max Chaney and with gentle
fingers closed his eyes. They were lukewarm to the touch, and somehow
less firm than living flesh. He hadn't been dead long; his arm moved
easily when she flexed the elbow.
She controlled an inner shudder and rose. "Can you lock this door, Dan?"
Outside the building Mutt met her with a worried frown. Kate patted her
head absently, wh
ich made the dog look even more worried. Dan, standing
next to them and swearing steadily, broke off long enough to demand,
"Well? What do we do now?"
Kate, staring at the peaked heads of the Quilak Mountains, didn't
answer. He nudged her and repeated the question.
Starting, she stared at him for a moment, as if recalled only by force
from a place far away. "Wait for the trooper. Jack Morgan'll be along,
too; he flew in this morning. Tell them everything you know."